TERRAFORMING TERRA
We discuss and comment on the role agriculture will play in the containment of the CO2 problem and address protocols for terraforming the planet Earth.
A model farm template is imagined as the central methodology. A broad range of timely science news and other topics of interest are commented on.

Friday, September 28, 2012

Curiosity Nails Streambed

This really cannot be much more important since it eliminates any
reasonable doubt over the existence of a hydraulic environment. We
have a stream bed with rounded pebbles representing ages of water
flowing. Whatever came of the nearby high ground did it for a very
long time.

For curiosity this is mission accomplished and now everything else is
a bonus. Hopefully that means many years of operations.

A though. I do not know if curiosity is well enough equipped but
recent comment has suggested that extracting samples and returning
them to Earth is on the agenda. In that case it would be appropriate
to collect samples and place them at collection points for possible
later retrieval.

Right now it appears that our technology is good enough to send
several more such missions if we wanted to and could justify the
program. Thus it is possible to envisage a collection point to which
samples are returned periodically before the explorer heads out on an
alternative trip.

Sept. 27,
2012: NASA's Curiosity rover mission has found evidence a stream
once ran vigorously across the area on Mars where the rover is
driving. There is earlier evidence for the presence of water on Mars,
but this evidence -- images of rocks containing ancient streambed
gravels -- is the first of its kind.

"From the size of
gravels it carried, we can interpret the water was moving about 3
feet per second, with a depth somewhere between ankle and hip deep,"
said Curiosity science co-investigator William Dietrich of the
University of California, Berkeley. "Plenty of papers have been
written about channels on Mars with many different hypotheses about
the flows in them. This is the first time we're actually seeing
water-transported gravel on Mars. This is a transition from
speculation about the size of streambed material to direct
observation of it."

The finding site lies
between the north rim of Gale Crater and the base of Mount Sharp, a
mountain inside the crater. Earlier imaging of the region from Mars
orbit allows for additional interpretation of the gravel-bearing
conglomerate. The imagery shows an alluvial fan of material washed
down from the rim, streaked by many apparent channels, sitting uphill
of the new finds.

The rounded shape of
some stones in the conglomerate indicates long-distance transport
from above the rim, where a channel named Peace Vallis feeds into the
alluvial fan. The abundance of channels in the fan between the rim
and conglomerate suggests flows continued or repeated over a long
time, not just once or for a few years.

The discovery comes
from examining two outcrops, called "Hottah" and "Link,"
with the telephoto capability of Curiosity's mast camera during the
first 40 days after landing. Those observations followed up on
earlier hints from another outcrop, which was exposed by thruster
exhaust as Curiosity, the Mars Science Laboratory Project's rover,
touched down.

"Hottah looks
like someone jack-hammered up a slab of city sidewalk, but it's
really a tilted block of an ancient streambed," said Mars
Science Laboratory Project Scientist John Grotzinger of the
California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

The gravels in
conglomerates at both outcrops range in size from a grain of sand to
a golf ball. Some are angular, but many are rounded.

"The shapes tell
you they were transported and the sizes tell you they couldn't be
transported by wind. They were transported by water flow," said
Curiosity science co-investigator Rebecca Williams of the Planetary
Science Institute in Tucson, Ariz.

The science team may
use Curiosity to learn the elemental composition of the material,
which holds the conglomerate together, revealing more characteristics
of the wet environment that formed these deposits. The stones in the
conglomerate provide a sampling from above the crater rim, so the
team may also examine several of them to learn about broader regional
geology.

The slope of Mount
Sharp in Gale Crater remains the rover's main destination. Clay and
sulfate minerals detected there from orbit can be good preservers of
carbon-based organic chemicals that are potential ingredients for
life.

"A long-flowing
stream can be a habitable environment," said Grotzinger. "It
is not our top choice as an environment for preservation of organics,
though. We're still going to Mount Sharp, but this is insurance that
we have already found our first potentially habitable environment."

About Me

Apr 2017 - 4.1 Mil Pg Views, March 2013 - Posted my paper introducing CLOUD COSMOLOGY & NEUTRAL NEUTRINO rigorously described, September 2010 I am pleased to report that my essay titled A NEW METRIC WITH APPLICATIONS TO PHYSICS AND SOLVING CERTAIN HIGHER ORDERED DIFFERENTIAL EQUATIONS' has been published in Physics Essays(AIP) and appeared in their June 2010 quarterly. 40 years ago I took an honors degree in applied mathematics from the University of Waterloo. My interest was Relativity and my last year there saw me complete a 900 level course under Hanno Rund on his work in relativity,as well as differential geometry(pure math) and of course analysis. I continued researching new ideas and knowledge since that time and I have prepared a book for publication titled Paradigms Shift&. I maintain my blog as a day book and research tool to retain data and record impressions and interpretations on material read. Do join my blog and receive Four items of interest daily Monday through Saturday.